Lucid
by anielle
Summary: Kidnapped by two men who want to use Lydia for her banshee powers, Lydia discovers that Stiles has not been coping well since the nogitsune possession - his nightmares are so horrifying and so frequent that he has a hard time distinguishing dreams from reality. [some nogitsune fallout that I think season 4 was sadly lacking. tw for thoughts of suicide.]
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a nogitsune recovery story, so it takes place after most of the season 3b stuff. Derek is still around (although he doesn't have a large role), so think of it as an adventure that happened between expelling the nogitsune and Derek's disappearance. Rated T for canon-typical violence and some mild profanity.

It is mostly written already, the thing is all outlined and I should probably only have a chapter or 3 left to write, so the story will all told be less than 10 chapters I should think. I am working on it a good amount each day, so the updates should be timely - I figured I could go ahead and publish already and use the knowledge that people are reading it as the motivation to make sure I finish it.

The disclaimer is of course that I did not create the characters or the world of Teen Wolf and I'm not making any money on this pet project. This holds true for the entire story and I will not likely include author's notes in any other chapters.

* * *

These guys had come up to Lydia in the parking lot, giving her a hard time, asking the usual creepy questions. What was she doing out so late, where were her friends. It seemed at first like an average altercation with a pair of skeezes – not safe, of course, but not dangerous in the way her life skewed towards these days – until the shorter one let her name slip.

"You're all alone out here, aren't you, Lydia?"

"I never told you my name," she breathed out. His hand closed around her wrist.

As his fingers wrapped tighter, Lydia could feel the world was wrapping tighter around her, closing off like his hand around her wrist, so that all that was real was this little pocket of time, penned in by her attackers.

But a shout rang through the air, bursting the moment. "Lydia!"

And then Stiles jogged into the orange streetlamp light.

She had no idea was he was doing at the school so late at night, but it didn't matter when his entrance felt like the arrival of a superhero. Probably because she was currently functioning as a damsel in distress, but even so, it was hard to deny that since being possessed by the nogitsune, their 'skinny, defenseless' Stiles had become someone different.

The hyperactive, excitable teen he had once been was muted, a version of their friend with quieter quirks and an armor of steel that glinted in certain lights. Somehow, having all of his vulnerabilities exposed had left him with a burnished, hardened edge. He was slight as ever; probably even more so than before, but at times, something in the way he carried himself spoke of a lean strength.

Which was to say that having Stiles come to her rescue was as reassuring to Lydia as any werewolf protector.

"Hey fellas, having a nice evening, are we?" Stiles nodded to them and smiled, never stopping his steps towards Lydia. "Love to stay and chat, but the two of us have got to be going."

He reached out to Lydia, but his progress was cut short when the second assailant shoved his own hand into Stiles' chest. The grip on Lydia's wrist tightened.

"You bothering this lady, buddy?"

The thug in his way was taller than Stiles, and he had to look up to talk to him, but Stiles was clearly not intimidated. "No, she's my friend, and we're leaving."

The two men exchanged quick glances, and Stiles pushed his way past the hand.

"Come on, Lydia," Stiles said, but the grasp on her wrist was still painfully tight. Over Stiles' shoulder, she saw the tall man give a shrugging nod, then raise a fist.

"Stiles—" she warned, but his turn wasn't quick enough, and the fist was crashing into the side of his face, sending him spinning.

"Stiles!" she screamed. But not that kind of scream, thank God.

"Sounds like he'll do," said her captor and the other man slammed down a second blow.

This one knocked Stiles off balance. He hit the ground and curled up to protect his head and stomach as the man kicked at him.

Lydia tried to bolt forward and help, but was held back by an arm crushing around her shoulders and pulling her flush against her captor. Her wrist was freed, but only so his other hand could press a damp cloth over her nose and mouth.

She struggled but could do no more than watch as the tall man bent over a winded Stiles, then slammed her friend's head into the asphalt.

"He's out. Help me get him into the car, Mark," she heard the man say as her vision blurred and darkened.

"Let me take care of the banshee first," was the last thing she heard before all her senses had left her.

* * *

Now the two of them were stuck in a dingy basement. From the dim light filtering in through the tiny window that sat just above ground level, Lydia could see that the place must have been out of use for a while.

Grimy and faded, a water heater tank next to a washer and dryer took up most of the far wall, some cracked hoses poking out from their sides. The back wall must have been the workshop side, with a dusty workbench and a rusted metal cabinet that probably held paint, judging by the splatters on the floor. A circular saw was pushed in the corner.

Lydia swallowed, hard, not letting herself dwell on the dull glint of the saw's metal teeth. Instead, she turned her attention to Stiles, who was slumped up against the cement support column in the center of the room. His head was pressed into the heels of his hands, his fingers tugging at his unkempt brown hair.

"Stiles?" He looked over at her as she stirred into a sharper wakefulness. "What's going on?"

He smiled glumly. "The same old thing, it looks like." His head went back into his hands, his eyes downcast.

Lydia didn't like the barren scrape of his voice, devoid of his usual expression, or the bitter huff of laughter that followed his words. This lingering desolation of his, though, was a conversation for another time. A time when they weren't being held prisoner by a pair of creeps.

"What do you think they want from us?"

The only response she got was a tiny shrug, a small shake of his head.

"They knew my name, and that I was a banshee. That must mean something. And it didn't seem like taking you was part of the plan, but they did it anyway."

Nothing.

"Stiles. Care to join me in figuring out how to save both of our lives?" she snapped at him.

A deep sigh. "It doesn't matter."

"I guess you're right. Scott and the pack will save us." She watched closely for his reaction, but he just muttered, "Yeah."

Lydia spent a few moments scrutinizing their cell, determining immediately that the window was too high and too small for either of them to get through. The workbench was blank of any tools, and a rattle of the paint cabinet doors didn't budge them open.

No wonder they weren't restrained; there was nothing they could do in here to fight their way free. No escape, and no tools. And no Stiles and his superhuman brain. He was still in the same defeated position, famed motor mouth silent.

Lydia sank down in front of him. She could see the darkness of a bruise coloring his cheek, the dark crust of blood matting the side of his face. Her heart clenched to think of him in pain, again, and because of her.

"Stiles," she whispered gently, and then, when that got no response, she tried again, sharper. "Stiles. We need to find a way out of this."

"It doesn't matter," he sighed, eyes closed.

"It does matter! This is your life, and it matters, so snap out of dreamland and get back to reality, okay!"

Stiles eyes flew open at that. They darted around for a moment, his 'putting things together' face finally appearing. Then he looked up at her.

"No one has ever said anything like that before. Why'd you say that?" His voice broke a little on the question.

This reaction had her at a loss for words. Stiles didn't seem to be looking for a response, though. He continued on, muttering, "That's new, that's never happened before."

"Of course that's never happened before," Lydia tried. "This has never happened before!" She gestured to the room around them, but her drawing attention to it only made her realize this situation wasn't exactly a brand new experience. Which just made it even more difficult to understand why he was taking this kidnapping so hard. "I mean, this sort of thing has happened before, once or twice—"

That made him snort, a twisted smile ghosting on his face, and even though it was the thinnest of victories, she felt relief at seeing any sort of a smile on him.

"Come on, Stiles, what do we do?"

He looked up at their surroundings for the first time. As his eyes squinted in the dim light, he brought his fingers to the side of his head and pressed them into his wound. He winced at the contact, then studied his fingertips as he rubbed flakes of dried blood between them.

After another glance around the room, he asked her, "Lydia. Is this really happening?"

"Of course it is, what does that even mean?" Her mind spun as she worked it out.

Stiles sighed and leaned his head back onto the pillar, closing his eyes heavily.

The world slowed to a stop with the churning gears of her brain as it clicked into place.

"Stiles," she said carefully. "This isn't a dream. Do you have nightmares like this a lot?"

Their eyes locked in contact for a quiet moment. Then he broke it by letting out a shaky breath and getting to his feet.

"We've got to find a way to get you out of here," he said, all business now.

Her heart was pounding in her chest, her mind reeling with all the possibilities held in the confirmation that he didn't say. But she pushed aside the thoughts for now and stood up, too.

"Let's find a way to save both of us," she said.

Stiles shook his head and continued his inspection of the paint cabinet. "I want to make sure you're safe." He tugged on the rusted handle.

"That thing's locked, I tried."

"Not locked, I think, just stuck." With a hefty yank upwards, he swung the door open.

The cabinet was mostly empty, only three cans of paint on the shelves. The lowest shelf was up fairly high, leaving a good amount of space below it, and Stiles gestured to it proudly. "There. You can hide in there."

"It won't take them long to find me in this tiny room," Lydia said.

"Not if they think it's locked, too. They won't even bother checking. Trust me."

"I don't think—"

"Trust me," Stiles said again, taking her arm and guiding her over to the musty cabinet.

Lydia's instincts were all telling her to take any chance she had to stay hidden from their captors. But still, she hesitated. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me," he said, brushing her concerns aside. "Just don't make a sound, no matter what. It'll ruin the plan."

"What plan? Stiles—"

A floorboard above them creaked, and the two froze. In a moment, the thumps of a person coming down stairs sounded, and Stiles sprang into action, pushing her inside the cabinet.

Lydia had to crouch down to fold her body under the shelf, and by the time she had settled, Stiles was already closing the door and shoving it firmly latched with his shoulder. It shut tight, barely a line of light to outline the door. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a series of small ventilation shutters that she hadn't even noticed from outside.

Stiles must have spotted them, though, because his face appeared in the slots and he whispered, "Stay quiet, no matter what happens. Don't forget. No matter what."

And then his face was gone, and she heard him set back down in the center of the room, and it was all she could do to stop her quick breaths from echoing too loudly.


	2. Chapter 2

It didn't take more than a second for their captors to spot Lydia's disappearance.

Stiles stood up as they entered the room and was immediately grabbed by the collar and slammed into the pillar.

"Where is she?" Mark barked.

"She left. Got pretty bored, this place is very one note—"

"You shut up." He shoved him again as punctuation. "Bobby, take a look around. She's got to be in here somewhere."

Bobby was already nosing about the room, peering under the workbench and behind the saw. He moved over to the paint cabinet. Lydia's breath caught in her throat.

Probably to cover any small sounds she might make, Stiles spoke up. "I told you, she left. She's not here."

"Shut up!" Mark gave Stile a blow to the face that sent the boy to the ground as Bobby pulled on the cabinet doors.

He didn't jimmy the doors up in the way that Stiles had, and they remained wedged closed. He moved on quickly, over to the washing machine and dryer. As he checked in those, Lydia finally let herself take in a shaky breath.

"I can't believe you guys kidnapped a banshee and didn't know about her powers," Stiles said from the floor.

"You said you knew about all this stuff," Bobby whined at Mark.

The larger man snapped back, "I do!"

Fixing them both with a clear gaze, Stiles said firmly, "You have no idea what she can do. You have no idea how strong she is."

He got a kick for that, one that landed on the bruises he had scored in the parking lot. The wind flew out of him, leaving him short on air, but he gritted his teeth and continued on. "She wanted to stay, of course, worried about me, but I told her that it made sense for her to go and get the cavalry. I can handle anything until help arrives."

Lydia couldn't help but feel like these were instructions he was giving her about his plan. Although she didn't know how she was going to get Scott and the gang while stuck in a cabinet.

His words had an instantaneous effect on the kidnappers. They'd frozen in their frenzied pacing. Lydia could practically see the worry sinking into their bones.

Stiles let them stew for a beat longer, then supplied, "Look, you guys don't seem so bad. Sure, you roughed me up a little bit, but who hasn't? If you want to run right now, I'll tell the pack not to hunt you down."

Bobby seemed surprised. "You would do that for us?"

"Yeah. No harm, no foul. Well, a little harm, but, eh, bygones," Stiles shrugged.

"And they would listen to you if you did?" asked Mark, slowly.

"Yes." Stile smiled reassuringly.

"You must mean a lot to them, if your word could change the mind of their alpha. They must care about you a lot," Mark said.

Mark took a step closer to Stiles, and Lydia was getting that familiar creeping sensation of a plan backfiring.

Stiles must have felt it too, backpedaling with a noncommittal, "Uhhh—" that seemed to be enough of an answer for Mark, who turned to talk to Bobby.

"Seems like he'll still work as leverage."

Unnoticed on the floor, Stiles muttered, "Aww shit."

"We can use him to get our banshee back," Mark continued.

A shiver tickled down Lydia's spine at his use of the possessive.

"We've got to get out of here, though," Bobby said, flinching at a creak in the house as though imagining that the wolf pack was already there.

"We'll bring him with. We can still use him to test out that mind control stuff. You got any of that juice on you?"

"Yeah, in my pocket." Bobby searched through his coat.

The finer points of this conversation were lost to Stiles, who was still stuck on that phrase –

"Mind control," he whispered.

He felt like ice water was slowly coursing through his veins, shutting him down, although he was unconsciously crawling backwards. The world was on mute and the only thing that Stiles could perceive clearly was the too fast thumping of his heart in his head and it was making everything fuzzy.

Mark and Bobby were moving in slow mo in front of him and the world was tilting on its side, and now a tinny ringing was drowning out the noise of his heart, but he could still _feel_ it, banging so loudly in his chest that it hurt, hurt to breath, and now Stiles realized that he was doing an awful lot of that, breath pumping in without seeming to go back out and his lungs were going to explode from the pressure.

"Hey kid, relax, we're just going to help you calm down, alright?" Mark said. Behind him, Bobby lifted up a vial of a shimmering teal liquid, and suddenly Stiles realized in spite of his swimming vision that the men were suddenly a whole lot closer than before.

"No!" he screamed. "Don't do this, please don't do this, please!"

He could feel tears spilling down his face but he didn't care, he just had to get out of there. He thrashed and struggled but it wasn't helping, and his arm crashed into the paint cabinet as the two men pushed him back into the wall.

"Jesus, kid," Mark muttered as he got a hold on one of Stiles' flailing arms.

Stile was struggling and screaming words that were unintelligible, and it was all Lydia could do to keep from springing out of her hiding place. Her ventilation slats let her see into Stiles' wild eyes, gone unseeing with fear. He'd said not to compromise his plan, no matter what, but could he have anticipated this? Would he still have taken the fall for her if he'd known that this was the form that fall would take?

Lydia stayed silent, unmoving in her uncertainty, as the men restrained Stiles on his knees against the wall.

"No no no, please, _please_ don't do this, please," Stiles whimpered.

When Bobby again lifted the vial, Stiles sealed his mouth shut, breaths pushing heavily through his nose. Mark grabbed at his chin and shook, but Stiles clamped his teeth down on his bottom lip, not reacting as the metallic tang of blood flavored his mouth.

Mark's fist collided with Stiles' jaw, sending his head to the side and making him gasp. He caught himself quickly and had his mouth closed by the time Mark grasped his chin.

His entire body was trembling with anxiety when Mark hit him again. This time, the wiry fingers clamped down too soon, pressing deep into his cheeks to wedge between his teeth. Stiles tried to bite down but the fingers just pried his mouth open wider as Mark's other hand tilted his head back.

Bobby poured the liquid down Stiles' throat, and Mark's wide palm immediately covered the boy's mouth shut.

The outburst of violence plunged into a resounding silence. Lydia's hands were clasped over her own mouth, wretchedly holding back her cries.

The men stayed in their positions, watching Stiles for any reaction, but he was still. Even his eyes stared blankly ahead, motionless. The moment seemed to last forever, weightless in the quiet air.

Then Mark got impatient. He shifted his hand over Stiles' face to pinch his nose shut. It wasn't long after that when Stiles' body, desperate to take in some air, clearly swallowed as he jerked from the lack of oxygen.

Mark took his hand away and let Stiles suck in some shuddering breaths. Even as his breathing returned to a normal pace, Stiles still shook violently.

Lydia recognized the gagging motions only seconds before he vomited up and onto his shirt. Bobby and Mark sprang back, letting Stiles drop forward. He caught himself on his hands and continued to heave on all fours just outside her small window to the world.

"This can't be real, this can't be real, this can't be real," he repeated between retches and gasps. "It's a dream," he sobbed. "Just a dream. Please. Just a dream."

"Do you have any more of that plant stuff?" Mark asked over Stiles' panicky pleading.

"In the other room."

Mark gestured for him to go get it. As Bobby hurried out of the room, Mark shook his head. "Damn, kid. You need to calm down."

Stiles didn't hear any of it over his desperate chant. "Just let me wake up, please! Wake up, Stiles, wake up, wake up…"

Mark sighed. He smashed his boot into Stiles' head and drove it into the concrete floor, knocking the boy out cold.


	3. Chapter 3

Lydia watched in horrified silence as the men pried Stiles' mouth open and poured in a second dosing of their sickly blue potion. In his unconsciousness, he swallowed it without a fight.

"C'mon, we gotta get out of here!" Bobby wheedled, shifting his weight from foot to foot in a nervous dance. "I don't want that werewolf to find us."

"That's why we got to get the kid's shirt off," Mark said. "Don't want them to track his scent. Here, help me."

Together, they yanked Stiles' bile-stained shirt over his head. In their haste, they let the boy's head slip out of their grasp; it hit the floor with a hollow sound.

As the men roughly dragged Stiles out of the room, Lydia's thoughts were filled with revulsion at the slowly dawning understanding that Stiles would probably shrug this situation off as an ordinary occurrence. It sickened her to acknowledge that, given the sort of nightmares he seemed to be entirely too accustomed to, he wouldn't be wrong.

She stayed in the cabinet for a while, partly from fear that the men weren't really gone yet, and partly too overwhelmed to move on to the next step. But every second counted, so she eventually did kick the door open to shamble upstairs.

When she left the empty house, she found that she was in a neighborhood not all that far from the school. It was on the rundown side of town, next to the city's filmy canal, but what more could you expect from a pair of clearly classless kidnappers?

It was still dark outside, and she realized that she had no idea how much time had passed since being snatched from the parking lot. The shadows made her jumpy on the walk, but she made it back to her car without incident. A huge swell of gratitude swept through her when she crouched by the fender to find her hide-a-key and found her purse instead, left on the ground where it had fallen by a rear wheel.

God, she so needed a hot shower, Lydia thought as she settled into the driver's seat. She would go out to the lake house so she wouldn't run into and subsequently worry her mother, and she would rinse off this frigid feeling with hot water and perfumed bubbles. But first she had to let the pack know it was time to go to battle stations. Again.

It wasn't until she took out her phone to make the call that she truly broke down. She wished she could call Allison.

She didn't want to be all alone at the lake house right now. She wanted her best friend there to listen and to comfort and, really, just to be there.

Sometimes, when she was at her darkest and most self-pitying hours, she felt the loss of having a girlfriend more strongly than she felt for Allison specifically. If she dwelled on the feeling, it would blossom into a more potent, Allison-specific sadness, but that dull ache of loneliness always filled in the background. She didn't have anyone in the pack anymore that she felt close to, except for Stiles.

Stiles. Her heart clenched at the memory of his terrified eyes and pitiful screams. That kicked her out of her moping and back into action. They had to save Stiles. She couldn't lose him, too.

She called Scott.

"Lydia," he answered, sounding surprised but not unhappy to hear from her. "What's going on?"

"Some guys kidnapped me and Stiles and he got me free but now we've got to save him." She let it all out in a rush, distantly shocked at how pragmatic her voice sounded.

"Who has Stiles? Where are they?" Scott was tripping over his words

Lydia ran through the events and gave Scott the information she knew, which, unfortunately, wasn't much.

"I'll call the pack, get them to meet us as Deaton's office. He might know something about that mind control potion," Scott said.

"Great," Lydia sighed, energy leaving her now that the responsibility had been passed along. "I'm going to go get cleaned up, I'll meet you guys there."

"Are you sure you're alright on your own?"

Lydia smiled at that. He might not be Allison, but at least he was a sweet guy. "I'll be alright, Scott. You get everyone working, I'll catch up."

* * *

"And she said it was blue?"

"Kinda glowing blue, yeah," Scott told Deaton. "And might have something to do with a plant?"

The veterinarian's brow creased. "I think I might have some information. Wait a moment while I find the right volume."

"Okay," Scott nodded, and Deaton hurried out of the examination room and towards his office. Scott slumped in his chair, tiredness hitting him like a wall now that his forward momentum was put on hold for the present. As much as he hated it, Scott knew that all he could do for the moment was wait.

"We'll find him. It's going to be alright," Kira said from the seat beside him, taking his hand into hers. She squeezed it tight. "You always manage to save the day."

Scott gave her hand a squeeze in response, and didn't say what he was thinking, that the last time he hadn't really managed to save everyone. Kira seemed to know anyway; as soon as the words were out of her mouth, her warm smile faded and she dipped her head down.

Trying to make her feel better, he added, "You're right. I'm sure it will be okay. Stiles has been through worse."

It was his turn now to regret his wording.

"If that mind control stuff really does work, and they're using it on him…" Kira trailed off. "That'd be awful for him."

Scott's throat was tight. "Yeah."

He couldn't stop the memories of last time from flooding in, the last time that he had gotten a call in the middle of the night about Stiles being held prisoner, the absolute panic he had heard in his best friend's normally sarcastic voice as he described a excruciating situation that had all turned out to be in his head. Scott had thought back then that it all being some sort of dream was even worse than it being real, to be tortured by your own thoughts. But now that the crisis was real, he wasn't so sure.

It had been Isaac, not Kira, who had been by his side for that phone call, and now Isaac wasn't even in town, would probably never be back. The pack was pitifully small these days, too many friends gone. Scott had only contacted one person to help them out this time – after Stiles, Lydia, and Kira, there was only one more pack member left.

Derek burst into the lab, the door's slam dramatically punctuating his entrance.

"So what's happening with Stiles and Lydia? Your text message was a little light on the details. And why did you think texting was the best way to let me know about this?"

Scott welcomed the distraction. Time to get back in the game. He stood up and filled Derek in on the details.

"We could try tracing them from where Lydia was being held, but she said they knew about hiding their scent so that probably won't work too well. Hopefully Deaton can give us something new to work off of," Scott finished.

On cue, Deaton came in with a large book, which he set down on the examination table. "I thought the potion Lydia described sounded familiar," he said. "I believe it is a poultice made from the leaves of a rare plant found in Central and Southern America. The person who wants to control another's mind simply has to bleed into the soil at the plant's base, then feed their victim the potion to gain the ability to administer commands directly into the brain."

"Do you have a sample of it?" Derek asked.

Deaton shook his head. "I've never come across it. As I said, it is very rare."

"So we can't track its scent," said Derek.

"I'm afraid not."

"Lydia said these guys didn't know much about how her powers worked or about all this supernatural stuff. So how did they get a hold of such a special plant?" Kira mused.

"There is more going on here than we can understand right now," the vet replied calmly.

Desperation was rising in Scott. They had more information, but they weren't any closer to finding Stiles with it. "So what can we do?"

"I think that we can narrow down the possible hide-outs if we all work together at cross-referencing the city maps," Deaton said. He looked up at the three pack members standing around the table as if seeing them there for the first time. "Where is everyone?"

Silence reigned.

There were too many empty spaces around the table. But Scott didn't want to dwell on who was missing.

"Lydia's coming as soon as she can," Scott said.

The assembled group seemed grateful for the out as the tension trickled away. Derek grabbed a map from Deaton's desk and unfolded it in front of everyone.

"So what are we looking for?"

* * *

A/N: Sorry that I took a whole week to upload this, gang. Just kind of a not ideal week for life-stuff. And sorry that this chapter doesn't have more Stiles; I wanted to show how the search is going and spend a little time with some other members of the pack.

Also, I know that you can't swallow when you are unconscious so the thing in the beginning with pouring that stuff down Stiles' throat is medically inaccurate, but, eh, I'm taking some artistic liberties here.


	4. Chapter 4

'Wake up, wake up, wake up,' echoed through Stiles' mind. He kept his eyes closed and tried to determine if he'd be opening them to the real world or a dreaming one.

The pounding of his head wasn't an indication either way. He'd often have a splitting headache after waking from a nightmare like this. And he'd suffered enough aches and bruises while asleep to know better than to mistake pain for a sign of reality.

But he wasn't in his bed, that much he could feel – or at least he wasn't _awake_ in his bed; what his mind told him he could feel was no guarantee against Inception-style wake-up fake-outs. Although the surrounding world sounded quieter than his bedroom, he could still be there, under his covers, the sun not yet risen on the day he thought he had just lived through. Hell, maybe he was still asleep and the past few months were all a part of one endless nightmare. That possibility was one he toyed with from time to time, and it was a surprisingly comforting option.

Figuring out what was real didn't make much of a difference, though. Either way, awake or not, he was still stuck in this hellish situation.

'Wake up!' urged the voice in his head, and Stiles blinked his crusted eyes open.

He was seated on a folding char in a large room that was mostly empty. It was a shabby space, with walls, floor, and ceiling all made of an aged dark wood. Mark and Bobby stood facing him.

"Hi guys," Stiles croaked. He coughed to clear his hoarse throat, and added, "Didn't you ever hear that watching a person sleep is kinda creepy?"

Bobby turned to Mark, surprised. "He's awake."

"Correct, thanks for filling us in on these rapid developments," Stiles said. He shivered in his seat, and realized that his shirt was missing, his bare back pressed against cold metal.

A grey jacket dropped into his lap.

"Put it on," Mark said.

Stiles' brain was still moving sluggishly, heavy from sleep. Something was off with Mark's voice, but he couldn't figure out what.

His fingers slipped on the zipper, and he heard again, louder and more insistent, "Put it on."

This time it clicked. These commands weren't something he was 'hearing,' not with his ears.

Bobby was looking in confusion at a very focused Mark as Stiles heard the instruction again. Mark's mouth didn't move.

Stiles' vision blurred. Horror burned through him, somehow both blisteringly hot in its urgency and icy cold in his despondence. He twisted to his side and out of the chair, the jacket tumbling from his hands as he fell, gagging. The reflex pounded in him to heave up the stuff and get it out of his system, but he knew it was no good, that if he was already under its control, it was too late. But then, he wondered, did he know that, or was he being told that he knew that?

Now he really did vomit, but this time it wasn't a tactical choice.

"You really got to cut this out, kid," Mark grumbled, and Stiles did, unable to bring up more than some bile anyway.

His captor hoisted him to his feet, and Bobby handed him the jacket again.

"Calm down," Mark commanded.

Stiles shook himself free and yelled, "Maybe I'll calm down when this stuff isn't happening to me every freaking night!"

"Touchy subject. Excuse me," Mark said, and by the amused smirk on his face and the wide-eyed bewilderment on Bobby's, Stiles could tell that his latest instruction hadn't been delivered out loud.

"Take care of him, will you, Bobby?" Mark asked, walking out of the room without bothering to wait for an answer.

Stiles lifted a shaky hand to his forehead and pressed his fingers in, trying to focus his thoughts on what he knew was himself. It was something he'd tried many times before, and while he didn't know if it actually worked to throw a foreign presence out of your brain, but it at least helped him to slow his clamoring heartbeat.

"I don't know what your problem it, man, but you really should put this on," Bobby's voice interrupted Stiles' thoughts, and the teen's head snapped to look at his kidnapper. "It's cold."

It was true. And at least Bobby's voice spoke outside of Stiles' head.

He snatched the jacket and shrugged it on. "I don't know what my problem is either," he snapped. "Considering that my comfort is so important to my frigging kidnappers."

Bobby did at least look chastened. "We don't want you to get sick or anything. I mean, we aren't trying to hurt you."

"Of course not. What's the point of commandeering your own human puppet if he's too sick to get out of bed?" Stiles slumped into the folding chair, too tired to remain standing.

"It's nothing personal, okay? And it's not like we'll make you do anything weird, it's just that the Mezican lady told us we had to do a test."

And there it was, the opening was right there. It was too easy to spot, how to exploit this situation. He didn't want to think too hard on whether or not he would have been this quick on the uptake before, so he let his mind skitter away to focus on his newest task in getting free. Hoping that however the mind control potion worked, it wouldn't let Mark read his thoughts, Stiles took the plunge.

"And the results from you weren't enough for to confirm your test? You just had to go ahead and kidnap some skinny high-schooler to mindfuck? Excuse me if I don't buy it."

Bobby's face was slowly draining color as Stiles' first words sunk in. He had him. He continued pushing.

"I'm really surprised you agreed to it, actually. What benefit are you expecting to get from that? Didn't you figure that their promises wouldn't mean much once they could just command you to forget all about it?"

"I didn't…Mark isn't…" Bobby stuttered, face ashen.

"No way," Stiles breathed, then paused for effect. "They already—you don't even remember."

"No, no, I'm not being mind controlled! We've been partners for years! Mark wouldn't do that to me!" Bobby's voice was panicky.

"Listen, Bobby, I've had experience with this." Stiles' voice caught on the admission, but he pushed it aside and plowed ahead. "Let your mind run through those possibilities, all those thoughts that seem crazy. It'll help you realize."

Bobby was clearly buying it, swaying unsteadily on his feet. "This is too much, I don't know anything about banshees and werewolves and…" He turned his glassy eyes to Stiles with a shudder. "What are you?"

As if there was a clear answer for that anymore. "Nothing," Stiles sighed. "I'm very nothing."

"But you know all this stuff. You said you had experience!"

"I do – I did. With mind stuff."

"What happened?" Bobby asked with the intensity of someone eager for a story but scared of what it might hold.

Possible responses flitted through Stiles' head – 'Who knows,' 'Maybe nothing,' 'I got better.' He settled on changing the subject. "That's not really important right now, okay? Mark, your closest friend, practically your brother, betrayed you. He's using you. You've got to do something about it."

Stiles locked eyes with his captor. "Let me help. You can trust me."

He clamped down, hard, on the nausea that turned in his stomach as he watched the fear flicker across Bobby's face. A fear that Stiles had put there with sickening ease.

He repeated, "You can trust me."

Bobby nodded. And Stiles wished that it were harder for him to smile back.

* * *

A/N: I wanted to get some more Stiles to you guys so here you go! Sorry for not being quicker in general, I've really been moving slow for some weird reason (it's taken me like 2 weeks to finish up Chapter 6 and I don't want to get behind!). But I'm reaching the end; I have to write farther and get more concrete before I could be sure, but I think it's going to be 9 chapters in total.

Thanks for reading on!


	5. Chapter 5

The shower had done wonders for Lydia's state of mind. The actual showering itself had her jumpy, with the closing of eyes to wash hair and the running of the water too loud to really hear if anyone was perhaps sneaking into her lonely cabin in the middle of nowhere, but the aftermath of the shower was wonderful. Life was just more manageable when you smelled like cherry blossoms instead of rust.

Closing the lid on the washing machine, Lydia breathed a sigh of relief. The last of the evidence was getting rinsed away; her mother would never have to know that anything out of the ordinary had gone on this night.

Assuming, of course, that she or any number of her friends didn't get permanently kidnapped, maimed, or killed. Or suffer a psychotic break.

But none of those things were likely to happen. Probably. And except maybe the last one.

Her banshee senses weren't on high alert, she was just buzzing with what she figured was a reasonable amount of stress, given the current situation. Lydia decided to take it as a reassurance that none of her friends were in serious physical harm at the moment. But Stiles and his state of mind had her petrified.

Sure, they'd all known that after the nogitsune, things were more complicated than his go-to description, 'fine,' but it was Stiles, and he was always so good at bouncing back. Lydia hated that it had taken so long for her to see that what he was actually good at was lying.

He'd gotten good at smiling and saying he was fine, and with everyone dealing with their own problems, it was always too easy to decide to believe him. And what was more, Lydia might have never suspected a thing if this night hadn't gotten so far out of control. What more was he hiding behind that easy grin?

She was determined to find out. Stiles had been her bedrock throughout all of this supernatural stuff, keeping her going strong through some of the worst times, moments when she was questioning her own sanity. Now was her chance to return the favor.

Which hinged, of course, on getting him out of the hands of Beacon Hills' latest villains.

With mace clutched firmly in one hand, Lydia left the lake house and got into her car.

She had to clamp down on her nerves again; not many people were at their lake houses on a Tuesday night and most of the homes were dark. The only lights guiding her over the bridge and back towards town were her own headlights, the Jefferson's place, and, surprisingly, an older log cabin that had been up for lease for the past year and a half.

It was silly to be so nervous of the shadows, since she had been in a lit parking lot when this had all started, but it was still a relief to pull back onto a main road that was illuminated with streetlamps.

From here to Deaton's was an easy route; in only a few minutes she would join with the rest of the pack.

But her fingers clenched on the wheel as tension thrummed through her. Something was changing for the worse with Stiles.

She drove faster.

* * *

Stiles pulled uselessly against the zip tie that bound his wrist to the metal back of the folding chair. He had hoped that his kidnappers would stay consistent in their carelessness and that he could just pop out the front door when he sent Bobby off to confront Mark. Destiny didn't see fit to grant that many lucky breaks, however; the men must have wised up and gotten more prepared while they were transporting him here.

Of course, a folding chair wasn't really the most secure way to lock someone down. It'd be cumbersome, but he could manage to get out of here with it attached to him if he had to. The noise might be too much, but that could be okay if Mark and Bobby were really having it out. Stiles strained to listen.

He hadn't felt good about turning Bobby against Mark like that. It made him feel dirty, no matter how much he repeated to himself that these two were probably nowhere near as close as Scott and he, and besides, these men were criminals, so there really was no comparison. But the truth was that he was provoking a friend to betray a friend. It didn't feel altogether different from the nogitsune forcing him to twist that sword into Scott's belly. And the question quivered in his mind, either answer making him queasy – had Bobby been so quick to trust Stiles because of some leftover powers of trickery from the nogitsune, or had Stiles always been capable of such manipulation?

A cold part of Stiles reminded him that his actions were geared towards survival, and that these introspective, soul-searching problems could wait until after he was out of the clutches of his mind-controlling kidnappers.

And besides, said a quieter part. In all likelihood, these men were figments of his imagination, and what he did to them or how they felt didn't matter anyway. Lydia's straightforward comment about how this was not a dream had had him believing at first that this was reality, but the experience hit on so many of his deepest fears that it seemed impossible for it not to be a torture developed in the darkest part of his psyche.

He could hear the rising of voices now, streaming from a room elsewhere in the cabin. Mark and Bobby were getting into the heat of the argument, hopefully too focused on their fight to be listening for any noises Stiles might make in his escape attempt. Here was his chance.

Awkwardly, he got to his feet, back hunched at an angle as it lifted the light chair off of the floor.

Pain shot through his head like a bullet, the effort needed to support himself too much for his battered body. Exhaustion and a decidedly empty stomach coupled together sent a wave of nausea rolling through him, and he sat the chair back down with a loud thunk.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, willing his dizziness away. When he'd gotten himself back under control, he could still hear the rumble of angry voices. He steeled himself, and then tried again.

His knees buckled and his head pounded, but Stiles managed to remain on his feet. After a moment of acclimating himself, he started to shuffle towards the cabin door.

He hadn't gotten more than a few feet when Mark stomped into the room. With the pumping of his blood so loud in his ears, Stiles hadn't heard the man approaching. He plopped his chair down and tried to look innocent.

"You! You did this!" Mark strode across the room to Stiles.

In an ironic reversal that did not go unnoticed by Stiles, he began to plead innocent when he was actually guilty. "I'm not the one who betrayed my friend, here."

"You're a conniving little bastard," Mark snarled, and Stiles couldn't disagree.

Mark yanked Stiles by the jacket front, trying to pull him to his feet and bring him deeper into the house, but with the boy's wrist still attached to the chair, he couldn't get his footing quickly enough. The metal banged against his shins and sent him tripping to the ground. Mark growled in his throat and lunged down to grab Stiles again, cutting into Stiles' wrist as he sliced the zip tie away.

Stiles was hauled upright and dragged to a darkened room near the rear of the cabin. It was probably meant to be a bedroom, but instead of a bed, a large table took up the center of the room.

It held beakers and test tubes, a mortar and pestle, just your average science lab junk, if your experiment also required a sharp knife with blood still tinting the blade. A few vials of the bottled turquoise potion sat at the far corner, and Stiles wasn't sure if those or the stained blade were more upsetting.

The centerpiece of the table was a dark green potted plant. Its trunk was thick and gnarled, its leaves fuzzy. The whole thing was dotted with piercing thorns.

It was decided. Of the three creepy items, the one that was somehow the most frightening was the shrubbery. Stiles did not like the look of that plant.

He liked even less seeing Bobby use the knife to cut open a gash on his palm and let his blood drip into the soil at the plant's roots.

Bobby looked expectantly at Mark, who told him, "Give it a try."

His heart sinking, Stiles pleaded, "Come on, Bobby, don't. This doesn't change what he did to you—"

"_Shut up_!" snapped a voice in his head, and Stiles' mouth clamped closed, more from surprise than anything else. He hadn't expected such a forceful command from the nervous man.

"It works," Bobby breathed excitedly.

This was only somewhat true, and Stiles opened his mouth to tell him so, but was cut short.

"_Don't talk again until I tell you to_."

The order flooded Stiles' skull, and he swallowed thickly. Bobby was harder than Mark to disobey.

Bobby rattled off a list of inane instructions, demeaning, but at least not painful: stand on one foot, stand on the other foot, pat your head – actually, considering that he had an open wound up there and possibly a concussion, that one did hurt. Nevertheless, Stiles carried them all out silently. It was so much easier not to fight, to just give in.

"Looks like we've finally got ourselves a good little soldier, doesn't it?" Mark grinned.

Stiles nodded. He hated it, but he nodded.

"_Don't try to escape_."

"We won't be needing to tie you up anymore, will we?" Mark asked.

Stiles shook his head. That he felt better about. He could fight it if needed, but for now he might as well go along with it.

"Good." Mark clapped a hand on Stiles' back and led him back to the main room. "Now why don't you just sit back down here and we can chat."

"Tell us what you know about banshees," Mark said, just as the command "_Tell the truth_," filled Stiles' senses.

Stiles opened his mouth to speak and nearly choked on his tongue. Bobby's earlier instruction to not talk thrummed in his head and the pressure in his brain as the two men's mandates collided gave him an instant migraine.

Between the gagging and the red face, Mark must have thought Stiles was about to heave again, because he rolled his eyes and said, "Come on, I thought we were over this already!"

When Stiles' angry retort came out as nothing but wordless gasps of air, Bobby figured it out. "You can talk again!" he said out loud as it dawned on him, the words entering Stiles' mind a moment later.

The sudden thunderclap silence of release was painful itself, but even the pulsating waves of receding tension was better than the roaring clash that the opposing instructions had caused. The command, '_Tell us all you know about banshees_,' sparked in Stiles' head like a fire poker; it was enough to shock him into speaking.

"I don't know much more than you, to be honest," he croaked.

"But you knew about them being able to, what, transport themselves?" As Bobby spoke, Stiles could tell he was sliding into dangerous territory but he couldn't stop the words from tumbling out.

"They can't do that, actually." The look the two men exchanged was enough for Stiles to know to continue without them having to prompt him. "I made that up. Although it could be true, I don't really know a lot about the extent of what banshees can do. They seem pretty powerful, but all I know for sure is that they can sense death or danger coming before it happens."

Mark's scowl was deepening and so was the red of his face, reaching a hue closer on the spectrum to purple. Not a good look for him.

Stiles' motormouth took over, for some reason deciding that the best course of action was to just not stop talking. "But yeah, I don't think banshees can just magic themselves to different places. I told her to hide in that paint cabinet back there, you didn't open it the right way was all –"

"You fucking piece of shit," Mark snarled and lunged at Stiles, walloping the side of the boy's head. Finding himself cowering on the floor, again, Stiles covered his head and blinked the black pinpricks from his eyes. All he could hope for was that the quota for him getting beaten to the ground had to be at least close to being filled by now. It was a pleasant surprise when Mark's wild swinging didn't land another blow.

Bobby was holding Mark back, pushing him off of Stiles. Maybe he should have been worried about the rush of gratitude that he felt for his kidnapper, but Stiles decided it was too soon to be worrying about Stockholm Syndrome and just gave in to the relief.

"Hold on," Bobby said as he got the other man to back off. "He's not wrong about everything. I can't let you beat him up too bad."

"Might be a tad late on that one," Stiles groaned. Then he reflected that he didn't really need to be a part of conversations like this and maybe it'd be best to keep his comments to himself.

"This fucking asshole kid lost us our banshee – could lose us our lives if that werewolf pack of his finds us!" Mark shouted. "And you're telling me that you're okay with that? That 'he's not wrong?' "

"He was wrong to do that, obviously—"

Stiles muttered, "Matter of opinion." What would be best and what would be most satisfying were two different things. He pulled himself upright as the men continued their argument.

"But," Bobby continued. "He wasn't wrong about you. This doesn't prove anything, Mark. It doesn't prove that you didn't do the same thing to me."

"Jesus, Bobby, what else to you want me to do?" Mark rolled his eyes. "I let you control the kid too; we're even."

"If you can control my mind, then we aren't even." Bobby's voice had an uneven tremor. Clearly he wasn't used to standing up for himself like this. But his eyes were resolute when he said, "You've got to drink the potion, too."

Mark shook his head. "No, Bobby, no. I'm not going to do that."

"Yes, you are." Bobby said more firmly than before, and Stiles heard his command.

"_Force him._"

Stiles' body stiffened, and in his hesitation, Mark picked up on what Bobby was doing. He turned on the boy and gave him a swift uppercut to the jaw, sending Stiles spiraling away, and then ordered, "_Fight Bobby_."

His head was reeling and not just from the punch, although that didn't help, either. The two voices clashed jarringly inside his skull, each one rising in intensity as they screamed at him to turn into a weapon.

This was definitely a fucking nightmare.

* * *

A/N: So this is the first one that I'm publishing without the next chapter being written up and that makes me a little nervous. I've got the next one like half-written and hopefully I'm not sliding into a session of non-productivity. But I just didn't want to make ya'll wait too long so here ya go!


	6. Chapter 6

It had only been a short drive, but when Lydia pulled up to the Beacon Hills Animal Clinic, the semi-calm zen that her shower had cultivated had completely evaporated, chased away by a gnawing sense of desperation. If she let her banshee intuition take over, the hopelessness was almost too dark to find her way out of.

They needed to get to Stiles, now.

Which is what she said when she joined the pack in the examination room.

"We will find him, Lydia. It's just that we don't have a whole lot to go on right now," Derek told her.

He and Scott were on opposite sides of the lab table, marking out circles on a map of the city as Kira did research on her laptop.

"These circles are all possible locations?" Lydia asked, heart sinking. There were dozens.

Derek nodded. "It's too many to check all of them."

"We'll figure it out, we just need another variable to start knocking out some of the options," Kira said, glancing over at Scott hopefully as she did.

Scott didn't react to his girlfriend's attempt to cheer him up. The guy looked miserable, as downtrodden as Lydia had ever seen him. This was one too many emergencies too quick on the heels of too many tragedies.

Lydia put a hand on Scott's arm and told her banshee nerves to quiet down for a moment. "It's going to be okay, Scott. We'll get Stiles back."

His worried eyes met her own. "Really? You're sure?"

She lied. "I'm sure."

The truth wasn't nearly so concrete; even if they saved Stiles from these kidnappers, Lydia was less certain that the boy they knew would be the one returning to them.

But Scott seemed heartened by her assurances. He stood up a little straighter and told her what they knew. "It's a really rare plant that they are using to make that potion. Deaton says bleeding on the roots lets you control the mind of whoever drinks that stuff, and burning the plant is the only way to cure it."

"The potion is only potent for a short time after you make it, though," Derek added. "So they've got to have the plant with them."

"And the plant has to be watered by fresh running water, so most likely they'll be hiding out somewhere near a water source," Kira said. "So we're crosschecking waterfront properties with their accessibility. Places that are abandoned or empty."

"But there's too many!" Scott cut her off. "Deaton's researching to find something else, but we're just losing time."

Kira and Derek took up reassuring Scott, but Lydia let their voices fade out as she listened to the keening of her senses resolve into a whole, like a tuning orchestra unifying into one harmonious chord. Their music told her she was right.

"He's at that lake house," she said. The tiny pack quieted as she spoke. "The old cabin for lease on the lake, that's where they're keeping him. A stream feeds into it, that's running water. And it was empty out there, nobody around to hear him if—" She broke off from the unpleasant thought. "If anything happened."

The faces watching her were tentative, uncertainty preventing their features from softening into relief.

"Lydia, you're sure?" Derek asked.

Her intuition was deafening.

"I'm absolutely positive."

* * *

Stiles felt like he was in some sort of absurd dance routine, a ridiculous comedy sketch.

Someone would shout a command into Stiles' brain, his reflexive response would be to try and fight it off, but the distraction of another command from the other person would come barging in and as his concentration shifted, his body would go on ahead and follow the first command, but only until another order came flooding in and distracting him from throwing off the second, and then his limbs would be jumping to do that one, and with his body careening around like a chicken with its head cut off, physics was all too happy to let momentum and gravity knock him off balance. And then of course the guys were beating him off as they both screamed at him to go and fight the other for them.

So from the outside, Stiles knew it must look comical. On the inside, it was really frigging painful.

As much as he wanted to just give in to the puppeteering and give his brain a rest, he couldn't turn off his natural instinct to fight back. So he continued to bob about like a marionette missing a string, connected to its master by just enough to do his bidding, but not enough to keep him from being a complete spaz while he did it.

He was used to this, he reminded himself. Being no more than an object, having his free will stripped away, it was nothing new, he was used to it. The tightening of the serrated grip on his heart reminded him that, unfortunately, he wasn't numb to it yet.

Bobby was the first to come to his senses, ordering Stiles to "_Stop fighting Mark, and don't hurt me._"

When Stiles lurched to a stumbling halt on his swing towards Mark, Bobby called out, "Look, this isn't getting us anywhere. I'm calling him off. Mark, let's talk."

"Now you want to talk?" Mark sneered. He told Stiles, "_Punch his damn face in_."

Stiles flinched, caught between conflicting commands as Bobby reiterated not to fight either of them. His hesitance seemed to prove to Mark that Bobby was being truthful, and he tentatively offered, "Truce?"

"Truce," Bobby agreed.

Mark released Stiles from the order he'd given; the sudden freedom made his knees go weak. He staggered over to a wall for support and let himself slide down to the ground.

Elbows propped on his knees, Stiles held his head in trembling hands, glad to accept the sting from his palms pressing on injuries in exchange for the gradual slowing of his dizziness. When the pounding of blood faded from his ears and his panting breaths quieted, Stiles turned his attention to his kidnappers.

He needn't have bothered. They were deep into an angry discussion, paying him no heed at all. Even when Stiles hoisted himself upright and shambled towards the back rooms of the cabin, their conversation continued on, uninterrupted.

This lucky break didn't mean much, he knew. Sure, he could get his hopes up that this was finally his chance to get free, but he was so damn tired and what was even the point with luck as bad as his? He was clearly a sucker for punishment, though, because that same part of him that was always telling him to mouth off to guys who were perfectly capable of killing him also couldn't let him pass up any opportunity to struggle towards freedom.

He had only made it a few steps into the hallway when his latest luck ran out. The argument abruptly halted when Mark said, "Now, wait a minute, what's this?"

Stiles focused his mind, trying to put up a defense, and took another step away from the room, knowing that his actions were futile.

A summons didn't come. Instead of a command sounding in his brain, Stiles heard noises of panic.

"Those were headlights, coming this way, right?"

"I think they might have stopped at a different house."

"Jesus, Mark, those can't be those werewolves, right? What are we going to do?"

Maybe it was the pack come to save him, and maybe not. Stiles just trudged deeper into the house.

* * *

Obviously, their superhuman fighting and healing skills made Scott, Kira, and Derek better equipped for a rescue party, but Lydia still felt as though she could do something more helpful than waiting in the car.

The plan had been to turn off the headlights when they got close to the cabin, pull around the back by the lake so as not to be spotted, then for the three more physically gifted pack members to burst in through the front door. Not the most nuanced of maneuvers, true, but their resident plan-maker was the one they were trying to save.

They'd called the sheriff on their way, so he was rushing over as backup. Lydia knew that they'd be getting an earful later about not bringing him in the moment they knew there was a problem, but she was actually glad that they had managed to figure out where Stiles was first and spare Sheriff Stilinski a few hours of worry for his son. Now, what would really be ideal was if they could get Stiles completely out of danger before the sheriff showed up…

She squinted and leaned in close to the windshield, trying to get a better picture of what was going on inside, but it was too dark to tell.

Screw it, she wasn't staying in the car. Scott should have known better than to believe that was ever going to happen.

As she crept through the back door of cabin, she heard the front door slam open, followed by frantic shouts.

"Does that chick have a samurai sword?" echoed back to her.

Lydia smiled. It sounded like Kira had brought out the big guns. And there sure was something satisfying in hearing her kidnappers so terrified.

It was only fair that she got a scare of her own when she turned the corner. With the sounds of commotion rumbling through the house, Lydia had not heard someone approaching. Someone being a very battered Stiles. She sucked in a shocked breath.

His face showed the signs of his beating. Bruises that had been budding the last time she'd seen him now blossomed into more vibrant purples and reds; the dried blood from his matted hair had trickled down to curve a trail around his cheekbone. The only injury that was noticeably new was a split lip, so Lydia was stunned by how exponentially worse Stiles looked. Whatever had been done to him since they'd parted had harmed him in places she couldn't see. The pain was visible only in his lifeless posture, the dull hollows of his eyes.

Lydia shoved her worry aside to be dealt with later. "Stiles," she hissed. "Come on, let's get out of here!"

She grabbed his hand and didn't dwell on how cold and clammy and wrong his skin felt. She just tugged, trying to lead the way to the back door, but Stiles didn't budge. He seemed to be still processing the fact that she was here. He winced and shook his head slightly, tilting it as he did, like he was shaking water out of his ears.

"Lydia," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you! You may have heard the rescuing noises of your rescue party up there?" Lydia nodded her head towards the front of the house, then pulled impatiently on his hand again. "Now let's go! I came in a back door this way."

Stiles wasn't letting himself be dragged along. He kept shaking his head, kept holding it at that off kilter angle. Lydia didn't think he was aware that he was doing it.

"But you shouldn't be here at all, Lydia," Stiles said. "This whole thing is about catching you; you shouldn't be marching right into the bad guys' lair."

"Yes, well, lucky for me I ran into you first." Lydia rolled her eyes. "Can we save the safety lectures for when we're actually safe?"

Stiles didn't say anything, just craned his neck even harder towards his shoulder.

Lydia squeezed his hand, unsure of how to snap him out of his reverie. She knew that the rest of the pack was taking care of the kidnappers so she shouldn't be so worried, but she couldn't shake off her unease. Without a follow-up, she simply pleaded, "Stiles…"

That brought him around. He led the way now, pulling her towards a different room in the house.

"The exit is back that way," she said, but he kept moving.

"Got to show you something."

He brought her into a dingy makeshift lab. In the middle of the table was the plant that had caused all of this, but that was apparently not Stiles' concern. He went swiftly past it to the little collection of filled vials on the other side. Picking up one, he unstopped it.

"Here, drink this." Stiles came quickly back around the table to Lydia's side, and the realization was setting in that he was moving with a lot of speed for someone who was supposed to be all dazed and confused, and that his constant, twitching head tilt was really eerie and maybe she had been wrong about running into one of the good guys first.

"Stiles, I don't think that's a good idea," she said slowly, taking a step back.

His hand shot out and snatched her wrist, an iron grip holding her still as he stepped in closer. For the second time that night, Lydia reflected that Stiles' slight body was stronger than it looked, but this time, instead of bringing comfort, the thought made her mouth dry with fear.

"I need you to drink this, Lydia." His voice was hard and low; his brown eyes filled with a potent intensity.

Try as she might, Lydia couldn't suppress her memories from flooding over, the feeling of her face pressing between those cold bars and of his body pressing in too close from behind, just as unyielding as the iron at her front. She heard the echo of his voice, her friend's voice, gliding in a slick growl as he threatened her. She felt the same oily terror wash over her now that she had felt then, as a man who looked like her friend had casually terrorized her, and relished it.

As she had before, she reminded herself that it hadn't been him, then. And it wasn't him now.

"Stiles," she said, her voice no more than a whisper. "I don't think I should drink that."

His hand spasmed tighter on her wrist. His head twitched toward his shoulder. His eyes still bore into hers.

"Stiles," Lydia repeated. She licked her lips, nervous to call attention to it. "I shouldn't drink it. That's the mind control potion."

His eyes flicked down to the vial in his hand.

The confident persona slowly washed off of Stiles' features as he came back to himself.

Lydia didn't think she'd ever felt anything more heart-wrenching than the realization that the recognizable characteristics of Stiles were the horror and guilt and grief and pain that had returned to haunt his eyes.

* * *

He hadn't even realized that he'd been in thrall. He barely remembered how he had gotten here. If he put his mind to it, vague memories would surface of dragging Lydia into this room and asking her to drink – or, from the look on her face, 'creepily ordering her' was probably the more accurate term. That was the scary thing, this had happened seconds ago and he was fuzzy on the details.

The hard to find holes in his memory, the overwhelming sense that everything he'd done had been his choice even though a tiny part of him maintained that something wasn't quite right about that, it was all too familiar. It was too much like those dark dark times before, the early days, when it had still needed to play tricks to get him to do its bidding, before it could just shove him in a cage to watch as it set about torturing his friends.

This couldn't be happening again. Stiles tried desperately to believe it, but even as he repeated the phrase, the urge rose up again.

"_Make the banshee drink the potion._"

No, not _his_ urge, Stiles reminded himself. Someone else's order. The voice was a woman's, accented, and her control was as strong as it was stealthy. He tried to shake it out of his brain.

The command thrummed louder, and Stiles unwittingly clenched Lydia's wrist tighter.

Lydia gasped and a tear trickled down her cheek, from fear or pain he couldn't tell. Her beautiful eyes were wide and full of both.

It was agony to see her like this, and he wanted to help, to make everything okay again, but he didn't know how and it was all his fault, every single thing that had gone wrong since that stupid night in the woods was his fault and how could he possibly fix that now—

"Stiles, please," she whispered.

He dropped the vial, and it shattered.

He took a few shuddering steps back and tried to push the repeated command out of his head. The muscles in his hand were tight from the death grip he'd had on Lydia.

Lydia. She was looking at him with guarded eyes, untrusting. Her hair was mussed and her complexion pale. The faint trace of a bruise darkened the lower part of her face and encircled her wrist. It was the same place he had grabbed her.

His hand ached. He hadn't been able to protect her after all. He'd gone ahead and hurt her himself.

He was so weak. If he really wanted to protect his friends, he needed to actually do what his subconscious had attempted back when it had finally figured out what was going on and sleepwalked him out into the woods to die.

Which made him think – that traumatic night had all been a terrifying dream. It was only too likely that something as excruciating as these past several hours was just another wacky thrill ride brought to you by the same producers as 'Caught in a Bear Trap in a Freezing Basement with a Murderer' and 'It Looks Like I've Got the Same Dementia that Killed my Mom.' Maybe all he needed to do was wake up.

Maybe he'd open his eyes to this morning and none of this night would have happened. Maybe he'd wake up months ago. Maybe none of this year would have happened. His heart hurt with wishing.

His fingers scrabbled on the tabletop, hand shaking as it found the blade.

He pushed past Lydia and yelled furiously at the voice in his head to shut up. One way or the other, he was ending this.

* * *

A/N: Yes I know I'm very sorry for making ya'll wait so long! Over a week! Apologies.

It'll probably be about the same length of time for the next one because that is hardly started either, but this thing is almost done. Max is two more chapters, maybe just the one.

And don't freak out, there will be no major character death in this story, I wouldn't do that to them :)


	7. Chapter 7

Shock and stress made Lydia's breaths short and erratic. She had known that Stiles had been administered the mind control potion, that he was in trouble and possibly not himself, but knowing it and seeing it were different things.

She was still reeling from it as Stiles shoved past her, still stuck in that uncertain territory between bad memories and a sinister present. It took her a moment to surface, and by then Scott and Kira had come crashing in.

"Have you seen Stiles?" Scott asked immediately, before furrowing his brow and saying, "You weren't supposed to come in here."

Lydia ignored the second comment and nodded. "I found him; he brought me in here."

"Where'd he go?" Scott started forward, as though he'd find his best friend hiding under the table or in a closet. Which, given the previous events of the night, was maybe not as far-fetched an idea as it sounded.

Kira's eyes found the smashed vial on the floor by Lydia's feet. "He tried to make you…" She couldn't finish.

Lydia blinked away the pinprick tears that threatened to glaze her eyes. "Yes."

"They're controlling him," Scott breathed.

"He's fighting it still, they aren't fully in charge yet."

The last word hung heavily in the room, weighing on the three teens like a sigh.

The answer was clear enough, Lydia knew. She couldn't fix all his battle scars with the flip of a switch, but she could end his current struggling with the strike of a match. Shaking the frost from her resolve, Lydia started sifting through the mess on the table for matches, a lighter, anything that could set fire to the plant and free Stiles from his compulsion.

"We just need to find something that will make this plant burn," Lydia instructed. Her friends nodded, comprehension dawning. Scott moved to the corner to look through the damp cardboard boxes that sat stacked against the wall; Kira joined Lydia at the table.

Lydia's fingers brushed the collection of vials, sending them clattering across the table top to where before there had been—

"He took it."

"What, matches?" Kira asked. She couldn't understand why Lydia's face was suddenly so grave. "We can got get them—"

"The knife."

Scott straightened up, at once on alert. "What knife?"

"The knife. The knife they used to bleed on the soil and gain control. It was here, I saw it." Her outstretched hand shook over the empty spot on the table. "Stiles took it."

"But why would he do that." It wasn't a question. Even Scott wasn't that naïve. He just didn't want it to be true. Neither did she. But the truth sat stagnant in the room.

And then they ran.

* * *

It wasn't like he wanted to die – that wasn't it at all. There were plenty of things he hadn't gotten to do with his life yet that he still wanted a shot at, and he certainly didn't want to leave his dad. Or Scott, or Lydia, or any of the pack. But he was proving to be a liability to them, and he'd rather he take the fall than any one of them. He had the least to contribute and was broken already. Besides, he wasn't sure that he was ever going to get the chance to live out any of those moments anyway; it's hard to have a girlfriend or go to college or take spontaneous breathless road trips when you were never awake. It was easier to sacrifice something if he was never going to have it.

He didn't think it was going to come that, though. Last time, it had pulled out all the stops to try and save him. If he made the situation dire enough, he was almost sure he'd wake up. If not, well, he'd still be done with this nightmare.

Stiles feel to his knees in the dewy grass at the bank of the lake and splashed the cool water on his face, hoping it would quiet the droning of that Mexican woman's command. And, somehow, there was a peace to be found in the crisp night air and the soft moonlight.

Stiles rose to his feet. Wet grass-stained patches of his jeans clung to his knees. His senses were in overdrive, capturing every detail like he was moving in slow motion.

The night was cold enough that his breaths dusted the air. They were coming fast and deep, his chest concaving in with each exhale. The cool metal of the knife felt weighty in his palm. It felt real. But that didn't mean anything.

He spun the blade in his hands, finding the best grip. It wasn't nearly as long as the katana had been; his arms didn't need to be fully extended. He was just dragging out time now, and if he knew it, then so did his nightmare. Playing chicken against your own mind wasn't a game you could bluff out of.

He cradled the knife closer, close enough that it was pricking through the fabric of his jacket.

"Come on!" The shout tore out of him. He didn't know if he was daring his nightmare or himself. "Come on!" His words turned into a scream of rage at the stars, and somehow his breaths were pumping even faster and tears were coursing down his face and he was shaking, from anger or fear or exhaustion, he didn't know. From all of them.

"You think I'm scared?" He had meant to yell it, a defiant question, but it came out a statement – sad and grim, but resolute. His mouth twisted in a feral smirk and he said, "It would be my absolute freaking pleasure."

When the universe gave him no response, he tightened his grip.

"Fine," he said.

* * *

"Stiles!" Scott screamed. When he'd first stumbled out of the house to find his best friend shouting at the sky and pointing a knife at his own heart, he'd been frozen in terror. But that stillness had shattered when the tensing of his friend's back signaled that he was seconds away from stabbing himself.

Stiles spun around to face Scott, and now the werewolf could see blood seeping down his front as the tip of the blade scratched his chest with each shuddering breath. And his face – the kidnappers had smashed his face into something hardly recognizable.

The words died in his dry mouth. Scott didn't know what to do to fix this.

Next to him, Lydia took a tentative step forward. The look of horror on her face was being fought back by a steely rationality. Scott, trying to emulate some of her level-headedness, moved forward, too.

"Stiles…" she began.

"No!" he shouted. "Stay back, where you are."

"Stiles," Scott said. "We're going to help you."

"That's why you have to stay there. You'll stop me, and try to find solutions, but I'll still be stuck here." Stiles shook his head. "Let me do this. It's the only way."

"No, Stiles, no!" Scott lunged forward in spite of himself. Stiles clutched the knife closer, his wild eyes not even wincing as the point bit in deeper. Kira's arms wrapped around Scott to hold him back.

"We've got to be smart about this," she murmured.

Every inch of him wanted to rush at his friend and force this moment to be over. But he nodded, and willed his body to back down.

"Stiles, you're acting crazy," he said.

His friend snorted. "You're just picking up on that now?" His voice hitched, caught on a sob. The bitter loathing in his eyes faded into desperation. "But this could help. At least for now."

"For now? Stiles, there is no more 'now' if you do this—"

Beside him, Lydia whispered, "He thinks this isn't real."

Scott turned to look at the girl. Her features were blank, still but for the rapidly blinking eyes that batted away the tears that welled there. "What are you saying?"

"He doesn't think this is real. He thinks he's asleep, or hallucinating, or…" Her big green eyes locked with his. "He thinks he'll wake up."

* * *

She finally understood what Stiles was thinking. After all these months of trying to figure out where his head was at, Lydia finally got it, and she had no idea how to help.

"We won't be able to convince him to stop," she told Scott, but his attention was suddenly fixed elsewhere.

In the sickening moment it took to turn her face back towards Stiles, images flashed too fast in her mind. Her heart trembled. She wouldn't be seeing his dead body. That wasn't possible.

Relief seared white hot when she saw Stiles still standing but was undercut when she tracked his gaze from his exhausted frame across the grass to see his father standing by the corner of the house. Red and blue tinged the air around him and made everything feel too much like a crime scene.

A deep sadness cut through Lydia's chest. No, she thought. He shouldn't have to see this. After everything, this was too much.

The lines of the sheriff's face were arranged in an expression Lydia couldn't name. It hurt to look at. So did his son's.

"Dad," Stiles said, his voice cracking like a young boy's. "It's going to be okay."

"Not with you standing there like that, it's not," the sheriff said. He was standing stock still, his hands held up in a nonthreatening gesture, like he was negotiating with someone dangerous over the return of a hostage. Maybe he was.

The scene spun out, Lydia knowing exactly which futile words would be exchanged before they happened.

"You don't need to do this," the sheriff said. "Just put the knife down, and let me help you, son. How can I help?"

Stiles was shaking his head before his dad finished speaking. "You can't. Dad," he bit down on his trembling lower lip as tears dripped down his face. "No one can help. No one can make this stop. I'm sorry."

Lydia backed away, moving in a daze. His words rolled through her mind in an echo. '_I'm sorry, I'm sorry._' He was part of this hellish night because of her, he was suffering this psychotic break because of what he'd done to protect _her_, and _he_ was sorry. The nogitsune had gotten in because of the sacrifice Stiles had made to save his dad, and now he was apologizing for it.

She brushed against Derek at the cabin's threshold.

"I got those guys tied up and secure. Did you find—" He broke off, eyes widening as he looked up.

Lydia kept moving past him back into the hallways of the house. _No one can help_, repeated Stiles' broken voice in her head. _No one can make this stop._

Glass crunched beneath her feet as she stepped on the shattered remains of the vial Stiles had fought to drop. Had thrown off mind control to drop, so that Lydia would be safe.

She knelt down and picked up the largest piece she found.

_No one can make this stop_, he'd said. She drove the glass into her palm.

She tipped her hand over the plant's roots, letting her blood trickle down her fingertips. '_I'm sorry_,' echoed in her head. She didn't know if they were his words or hers.

* * *

It hurt to look at his dad. He was standing there, helpless, in his best soothing cop stance. His voice was steady as he tried to reason with his son; only his depth of his expression showed how truly terrified he was.

He couldn't do this. Not to his Dad. Stiles closed his eyes, about to lower the knife. Until he realized.

This was its final play.

His eyes flew open to see his dad, Scott, everyone in the yard had moved five feet closer than before. Of course he couldn't kill himself in front of his dad, that's why it had brought his dad out here, looking so small and broken.

Stiles' clammy fingers slipped on the knife as a wave of protectiveness towards his father swept over him. He had to watch out for his dad. His real dad. And his real dad needed him to be awake – or at the very least, he didn't need a basket case son.

He regained his grip.

"Stiles, please—" his dad started.

"Dad, I love you." A lump swelled in his throat and he couldn't speak. Stiles swallowed. "I love you, Dad. I'm doing this for you. So everything can be okay again."

The little color left in his father's face drained away in an instant. "No, Stiles. Don't do this. No." His dad's voice was rising in intensity, leaving calm cop behind.

Scott was shouting, too, but their voices bled into the background as Stiles raised the knife.

And then his head was full.

"_STOP_."

The command overwhelmed him, rattled through his entire body with a force that far surpassed Bobby or the Mexican woman. A deep, dizzying ache rooted him frozen in place. He'd know that superior tone anywhere.

"Lydia?"

She stepped through the crowd of people who were staring at him in confusion. She didn't come close though, just to the front so he could see her, pale and tiny and fierce. Blood oozed from her fist.

"Stiles," sounded her voice inside his skull. "Put the knife down."

"Lydia, please, don't do this to me," he pleaded. It was unfathomably wrong, having her voice speaking to him inside his mind, forcing him to bend to her, pressing down on his free will. "Don't make me, Lydia, please." He could feel that she didn't want him to continue arguing, but still he ground out, "Not you."

Her voice was cold as iron. "_Put. The knife. Down._"

He tried to buck the control, tried to fight back as he had been all night, but her will bore down on him, crushing him beneath the force of it.

"Now," she finished.

The knife fell from his fingers. His shaking hands circled around his head and pulled at his hair. But he couldn't rip his head open to let the voices out; he had never been strong enough to do that.

His hands circled around to press the heels of his palms into his eyes, and the boy crumpled to his knees and cried.

* * *

A/N: I am so so SO sorry for making you all wait this long for this. An explosion of real life stuff happened, which was good for my real life but not for the good of this story. I hope you all still read it and appreciate it anyway; it was really intense for me to write so hopefully it's an intense read, too?

I plan to have one more chapter to wrap up the hard aftermath and the sticky feelings, but I also feel like the story has a sort of natural minimalist ending going for it here, so there is at least a sense of completion if real life gets in the way again.

Thank you, my lovelies!


	8. Chapter 8

He sat with his knees pulled up to his chest on the floor of his dad's closet. It was a weird habit he'd picked up years ago, back when this side of the closet had still been full of his mom's things, and he could close his eyes and inhale the whiffs of perfume that continued to cling to her clothes. He used to sit in that small dark space for hours while his dad was at work, imagining that she was there.

These days, he had different memories associated with being shut up in a tiny space like this, what felt like multiple lifetimes of memories of being locked up and boxed away. It didn't make sense, was probably wrong for him to get any kind of comfort from confinement, after that demon had designed the perfect cages to carefully cultivate a particular gnawing brand of claustrophobia in his prisoner. But whatever it had done to him must have worked, because apparently Stiles was into the sensation now, freely choosing to blankly while away hours in contained areas; most of the early morning hours he'd spent standing fully clothed in the shower.

He didn't remember a lot of the time in between the climatic end of the night and his present stint in head case closet, not in clear specifics. His memory was sporadic, images and sounds rearing up like a flashback in an action movie. He saw, strobing in shades of blue and red, his dad rushing towards him, falling to slide on his knees across the wet grass and refusing to let go of his son. Scott, tossing aside the abandoned sacrificial knife, his eyes never leaving his best friend's face and housing such emotion that Stiles had had to turn away. Lydia's voice reverberating through his skull, reiterating rules and calming phrases even after his dad had bundled him into the squad car and brought him home.

Melissa had swung by their house after her shift to give him a once over. Whatever the diagnosis or treatments were, Stiles couldn't recall. She'd hung behind and the parents had murmured together at the kitchen table. They were discussing him, undoubtedly, and normally Stiles would have skulked around to eavesdrop, but he had gone straight upstairs to the shower. He didn't know how long he'd stood under the water, but at some point his dad found him in there, dripping in soaked clothes.

Toweling dry and making it to bed was another blank.

As much as he loved his pillow, his bed was not comfortable when he finally got under the covers. He didn't move. It wasn't the position that was the problem.

His dad sat next to him, remembering better times, maybe, or discussing the events of the night… It all faded down into a dull buzzing to accompany his staring at the ceiling. The only part of the conversation – monologue, really – that stood out was the end. His dad had become very insistent, rousing Stiles from his haze.

"You hearing me? You've got to promise that you won't try something like that again." His dad grabbed his hand and gripped it tight. "I want to go in to the station and nail the bastards that did this to you, but I can't leave this house without knowing that you won't try and hurt yourself again."

"Don't worry, I can't." He had meant it to reassure his dad, but the wording hadn't done much to soothe the sheriff and then it hit him, too. Stiles curled on his side, whole body cupped around where his dad was holding his hand. He didn't mean to let tears leak out, but he was so _tired_, and then it just came out in a sob. "I can't. She won't let me."

His body wracking with soft cries, he drifted off to sleep with his father clutching hold of him.

Of course his dad didn't like how Stiles was reacting to the most recent person invading his mind, but he clearly had been comforted by the knowledge that his son was unequivocally safe for the moment, no matter the hows and whys.

And Stiles was stuck on the floor of his dead mom's closet wondering how to find comfort there.

The house was quiet, and somehow, his mind was, too. At least there was a favorable symptom of being completely helpless. It was almost easy to relax into the uncomplicated trance of a choice-less existence.

The aftershock of the casual thought pierced through him like a sword. He bolted up and out of the closet.

He boiled with rage, livid that he was once again teetering on this precipice, battling the welcoming, warming urge to dive off the ledge and into the simple ease of complacency. He was tired and dizzy from all the fighting, the endless eternities of defiance he'd had to muster. Only this time, he'd been shoved back onto the cliff not by that demon, but by Lydia. The thought made him sick.

As though he had called her into being by thinking of her, Lydia was sitting quietly in the living room when he ventured downstairs.

"Speak of the devil," Stiles muttered. A wince told him she'd heard, although he hadn't meant for her to.

Or maybe he had. He didn't want to hurt her, but he was hurting too, and the way his emotions were rattling around inside, he wasn't too clear where he stood on any of it anymore. All he knew was that he wanted out, but he wouldn't get it. Not even he could gain any ground in a battle of wills against Lydia Martin.

He couldn't believe the nogitsune had never used her as his jail keeper before.

* * *

"I asked your dad if it would be alright for me to come over here," Lydia said. She gave a little shrug that was supposed to look nonchalant.

Stiles didn't react to the stiltedness of her gesture, though. He was looking at her with heavy eyes. He'd never looked at her that way before. Not even last night, in the brief moment of eye contact that she had hardly managed to bear. His whole frame drooped.

She cleared her throat and filled the silence. "He told me where you guys hid the spare key."

A flash in his eyes, his mouth twisted, and there was the anger she'd been expecting. "The Stilinskis could never stay closed off from you, Lydia," Stiles said, spreading his arms wide in a mocking welcome. "Mi casa is su casa, of course."

She flinched at the acid veining his sarcasm. "If you want to be mean, I guess that's fair."

"You could always tell me to stop." His words snapped out like a whip.

She let out a pained gasp. "Stiles, I'm sorry, but you're not giving me much of a choice."

His joking cadence vanished. His mockery had been cruel, but that coldness didn't compare to the ice in his fury now. Lydia didn't want to consider who it reminded her of. "You want to rethink that statement."

"I'm sorry. Stiles, I'm sorry." Lydia struggled to hold back her tears. She didn't get to be the one who was all emotional about this. She knew when she'd done it that it was horrible and unforgivable and also her only choice, and she would take this on again if it would save him. There had to be some way to save him.

Her tears had softened him, at least for the moment. He'd started wringing his hands at the first sign of her distress; even now, he wasn't immune to her sadness.

Gingerly, he sunk down next to her on the couch. He had so many bruises she couldn't see.

"I am sorry," she told him.

It surprised her how well she was able to read the emotions that passed over his face. The quick turn of his lips meant that he knew, the following downcast glance meant that no matter how true, her apologies didn't help. He took a breath to speak, then swallowed his comment down, and this was familiar, as well. This side of Stiles, that took the time to think before speaking, came out in serious moments. At first blush, it seemed uncharacteristic of the hyperactive teen, but Lydia had gotten to know the quiet parts of Stiles too, and they made perfect sense for a boy who cared too much and tried too hard and felt so deeply.

Emotion made her throat close up and it was a good thing that it was his turn to talk because looking at this pale broken boy and imagining him gone rendered her speechless.

At last his eyes flicked up. He placed a cool hand on top of hers. "Lydia," he said, his voice gravelly. "You have to stop."

She bit her lower lip as her guilty gaze darted away. "I want to. I do. But how can I if you are going to hurt yourself?" His hand pulsed tighter on hers. He started to remove it, but Lydia held onto him. "Before I can let you go, you've got to tell me what's going on in your head, Stiles."

He huffed out what could pass for a sarcastic laugh. Ignoring it, she continued, "And you've got to be honest about it, you're never honest."

She could see in his eyes that that stung, and she let him pull his hand away. "I'm not suicidal," he said. It wasn't exactly a lie.

"But you're not convinced. That this world is the real one. You're not convinced."

He smiled wryly, because of course she could see past that. "No." He heaved a heavy sigh. "No, I'm not convinced."

"Well then, Stiles, I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

That sparked his anger back up, but it was more bitter than blazing. "You could start by burning that freaking plant. This many of my worst nightmares all coinciding on one day seems like too much suck all at once to actually be happening."

There was a pause while they both thought about that. He went on to say what they had both concluded. "Well, maybe that isn't so hard to believe. I'm like a magnet for this stuff."

Lydia could see some of the old Stiles in his humor. It made her smile, and he smiled back. She found herself amazed that his honey eyes could hold laughter and pain at the same time.

"Stiles," she asked softly. "What can I do to make you believe that this life is real?"

He took in a shuddering breath before answering, "You could make me."

* * *

She turned her face away, like he'd hit her with a physical blow. "I didn't mean it like that," Stiles murmured.

It was an apology, but it wasn't entirely honest. His unfortunate strongest trait, manipulation, maneuvered the conversation to go one of two ways. He could make her see the dire state he was in, convince her to let him go, or – or he could, at last, just quit trying.

Here was that precipice again, and he wished he was stronger and could resist the temptation, but the weightlessness of the plunge was too enticing. The riddle might never have an answer, but he could be free of the need to solve it. He was sick with wanting it.

"You could make me believe in all of this, Lydia. You could make it go away."

Lydia looked disgusted, her face pale with shock and revulsion. Here he was, after all of the pack's struggles to get his humanity back, begging her to take it away. Finally giving in to the weakness in his knees and heart and mind, and she hated him for it, and he hated him for it, but still he was desperate for it.

"Stiles, I can't do that," she breathed. "You're a person, I couldn't—"

"You could, and I'm not," he interjected. "I'm _not_ a person anymore, Lydia."

He could read the response in her eyes.

"This isn't a pity thing," he responded. "I'm serious. People have feelings, they think about things. You know, 'I think, therefore I am.' "

Lydia had gotten her voice back. "You are doing plenty of thinking, Stiles. Too much, actually."

"Maybe I'm overthinking." He got to his feet and paced the living room. "But maybe I'm not, because maybe the thoughts I'm second and triple and quadruple guessing aren't my thoughts in the first place, they're somebody else's. I can't tell."

Words were tumbling out of him now, things he hadn't planned to let spill out, but they were real and they were true and there was no holding back now that he'd let himself fall. "At this point, it doesn't matter if I am anyone's puppet, because I have no life anyway. Decisions don't matter, making choices don't matter, because I can't tell when I'm living and when I'm asleep. So any decision I make, it's not an actual choice, it's not free will — it's just arbitrary, meaningless."

Lydia pleaded, "Your life isn't meaningless, Stiles."

He waved her words away. "It's not a life. It doesn't matter what I do because I could make a choice and live with it for a year and then just wake up and nothing I did mattered at all, because it never happened, because it's all some made up adventure in my freaking head.

"You can make me believe this, live only in this life, or you can let me go," he finished quietly. Wet burned his eyes as he looked at her. "What if it's still in me, Lydia? Or what if it never was? What if everyone is still alive, Erica and Boyd and Heather and Allison." His voice wavered. "My mom. What if everyone's alive, and all I have to do to see her again is wake up?"

* * *

His eyes were shining with tears and painful hope. The picture he painted was certainly a beautiful one, a tempting escape. If she weren't convinced of the reality of this world, Lydia didn't know if she could have held herself back from that freeing fantasy for as long as Stiles had been struggling against it. It was exhausting to imagine even for only a minute.

As if he could tell where her thoughts had gone, Stiles sagged. "I'm just so tired. I never get to rest. Every time I go to sleep I'm just stuck in my head, trying to figure out the same riddle." He shook his head. "At least if I can't get back there, I can sleep."

She let herself live in his fantasy for a moment more, letting her best friend's laugh echo in her ears before clenching her heart and turning away from the bright vision.

Lydia's tongue felt thick and dry in her mouth when she said, "It's too risky, Stiles. Even if you aren't sure that this is real, you know that what you did last night is too risky."

Still, he held out. "But if I never wake up—I can't leave my dad out there alone."

As gently as she could, she said, "But if you're wrong, you will be."

His eyes glistened. One tear escaped before he shut his eyes tightly and turned his face away. The tear shimmered as it caressed its trail down his bruised cheek.

Tense shoulders and shuddering breaths told her that he was doing what she had just done, saying goodbye to all the people he loved. So many people he would never get back.

After a few moments, Lydia cast aside her hesitation and got up to wrap him into a hug. He sucked in air as she clung on to his battered body, but he didn't pull away. Instead, he leaned into her, strong arms encircling her, holding her close.

They stayed in the embrace for a while, until his hiccupping breaths slowed and his body ran out of shivers.

Stiles stepped back, wiping a hand over his face to catch the tears that remained there.

"Sorry," he said. "It's been a really, really long day."

"I'm getting that," Lydia told him, and finally, it was true.

"Yeah," he said, and the look on his face reminded her of that day in the locker room all those months ago when she had helped chase away his panic attack. His expression had held sadness, and gratitude, and vulnerability, and a little awe. Now, like then, it made her want to run her fingers through his hair and repeat the gesture that had helped him, because the only time his face ever looked more beautiful was when it cracked one of those sunshine smiles that came all too rarely these days.

But she took a calming breath, and so did he, and they each took a step back to make some room for the distance between them.


	9. Epilogue

Stiles woke with his heart pounding frantically in his chest.

He kept his eyes screwed shut as the realization washed over him – it had been a dream, it had all been a dream.

His dad hadn't gotten fed up with all his neuroses and anxieties and thrown him back in Eichen House. He hadn't been strapped down to a bed 'for his own protection.' He hadn't been injected with a slick poison that made his vision swim and turned orderlies into chuckling shadow versions of himself, who spoke in slimy, low voiced riddles and alternated between rolling their eyes and throwing medical instruments at his head when he didn't know what answer they were looking for.

He hadn't squirmed on that bed for days before Scott came to visit, eyes red-rimmed, to tell him that the sheriff had been right, that Stiles was too far gone, and only one person had a chance of saving him. He hadn't screamed himself hoarse in the hours between Scott's back shuffling away and Peter striding in to administer the 'treatment' he was certain was the sole way to save the helpless, insane boy.

It had felt like weeks of torture, but that had all been a dream.

He opened his eyes to the familiar darkness of his room.

He reached up to flick on his bedside lamp, but it turned on before his fingers touched the switch, blinding him with the sudden brightness.

As he blinked the light from his eyes, he realized his hand had never made it to the lamp because his arm was being pressed down onto his bed. He startled and tried to sit up but his other wrist was pinned, too.

Panic gripped him. There were four ski-masked adults surrounding him.

He filled his lungs with air to yell, only to have the wind knocked out of him by a swift punch to the face.

"None of that, please." To Stiles' surprise, the voice that spoke was a woman's.

Stiles found enough breath to wheeze out, "You won't get away with this. My dad's the sheriff."

The woman laughed. "You don't say. Maybe that's why the sheriff's office turned a blind eye to your rampage through the hospital."

The air whooshed from Stiles' lungs again, the shock hitting him like another blow. "I – it wasn't –" he stuttered. "Please—"

He knew apologies were not going to cut it. These people had broken into his house to get their vengeance; 'I'm sorry, please don't hurt me,' was not likely to change their minds. And people had died in that hospital raid. It was only fair that he suffer some punishment for that.

But when the burliest of the intruders hefted up his trusty baseball bat, self-preservation kicked in and Stiles' voice came out in a high, fast whine. "My dad'll find out—"

"We're counting on it," the woman said.

She switched places with the man holding his bat, fading backwards to stand with another man, flanking the door like guards. Stiles' heart plummeted as his mind spun the puzzle pieces together.

"Not my dad, please," he begged in a whisper, now desperate to keep the volume levels low. "Leave him alone, please."

The man just raised Stiles' bat above his head, preparing his first strike. Stiles yanked frantically against the person holding him down but he couldn't pull himself free.

"Please," he cried, and then the bat was crashing into his side and his pleas turned to an involuntary yell. He bit down on his lip, hard, to try and muffle the sound, but he could hear the scuffling of his dad tumbling out of bed. He thinks this is me waking up, Stiles thought wildly. He thinks he's coming in to wake me up from another nightmare, not walking into one himself.

He didn't have time to beg or warn or do anything before the bat hammered into him again.

He heard his dad come in, saw with bleary eyes the intruders holding him back as he staggered to reach his son. They were giving him some speech about the hospital and retribution, and he was shouting for them to leave his son alone, and Stiles' screams filled in the background noise, because the man with the bat was finding his rhythm, landing each blow with more force than the last.

Stiles felt more than he heard a crack resonate from deep within his chest, and another, and he coughed warm ruby liquid up from his lungs and that was greater agony than any of the cracks had been, and then he couldn't breathe, his stomach contracting wildly, sucking in little pockets of air, but he couldn't let them out and they weren't going anywhere, just filling him up like a balloon about to burst, expanding up underneath his broken chest.

He realized vaguely that the man was no longer hitting him and that was his father's face blurring like a watercolor in front of him and he wanted to cry and say goodbye or that he was sorry, so sorry, but he didn't have enough air for any of that, and yet he had too much, but – he couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe he couldn't breathe —

His eyes flew open and he reared upright, taking in a huge gasping breath that plunged him immediately into a fit of violent coughing. All the movement sent a sharp pain shooting across his torso and he grasped his side, holding himself together as he reminded himself that it was a dream, had all been a dream.

Without turning on his light, he scrabbled for his phone, dialing on autopilot without even having to glance at the numbers.

* * *

Lydia was barely awake as she answered the phone, mumbling Stiles' name by way of hello. The first couple of nights he had called, the shock of receiving a call in the middle of the night had sent her careening into immediate alertness; now, it was such a part of the routine that she didn't even open her eyes as she pressed the phone to her ear.

She murmured her usual comforting phrases: "It's okay, you're awake now, Stiles, it's okay, you're awake."

When his only response was harsh, hacking coughs, Lydia jolted awake. "Stiles?" she asked, voice sliding higher, sounding shrill in her own ears.

She held her breath for a moment, willing her fear to ebb so that worry in her voice wouldn't ratchet up the panic on his end. "Stiles, just breathe, you're awake. It's okay now. You're awake, you're safe, everything is okay."

"I know," he scraped out as his coughing eased.

Lydia leaned back into her pillows, her heartbeat falling in time to his steadying breaths, slowing and deepening as he calmed.

"I know I'm awake," Stiles repeated. His voice was rough but warm. "I never think to call you when I wake up in my dreams."

Joy welled up inside her. It was the first time he'd commented on their plan working since they'd begun this nightly ritual a few weeks ago, after devising this system and burning that plant. She racked her brain for words to express how happy this made her, how pleased she was that she could be a help to him, how her heart leapt at the impossible certainty in his words. All she came up with was, "I'm glad."

There was a long, comfortable pause as the two lay there, quiet but joined together in the dark.

Eventually, Stiles said, "Me too."

Lydia smiled and pretended not to hear his hard swallow or the slight sniffle that followed it. She just listed off a reminder, like she did every night, placing him back in reality. "We had a trigonometry test today, and tomorrow is the first day of oral presentations in English." She yawned. "Well, it's more like today is yesterday and tomorrow is today at this point, but you get it."

He chuckled. "I get it."

His voice was low and sleepy when he spoke again. "You're amazing, Lydia."

There wasn't really an answer for that. But he wasn't looking for one.

Lydia waited until she thought by the depth of his breathing that he had slipped back into sleep. "Sweet dreams, Stiles."

"No," the boy murmured, surprising her. But as he continued, words flowing out soft and slow like honey, she realized she hadn't been entirely wrong, he was just speaking while half dozing. "I don't dream after I talk to you. I just – sleep."

"That sounds good," she whispered, not wanting to rouse him.

She didn't know the contents of all of his dreams, although sometimes he told her about the nightmares he'd risen from, words tripping around themselves in a pattern that hardly made sense in their haste to distance themselves from him. They wove a dark picture, of blood and screams and crunching bones, sometimes; sometimes it was a more sinister rendering of tiptoeing panic and slippery, penetrating lies. 'Trapped trapped trapped' was the overwhelming theme. She didn't think she could handle living her half-life in such a world as Stiles' head.

His voice filtered through her reverie. "I should call you every night before I fall asleep. Never have to dream."

"You could, you know," she told him. "I wouldn't mind."

Stiles didn't reply. He'd drifted off into a peaceful rest. The invitation hung open on the crackling connection that tied them together.

* * *

A/N: Well that is that. Thank you for waiting so long to finish this ride with me! I know this last installment took a while, and I wrote these last two bits as one but it felt like there should be a break between them, and so thus an epilogue chapter was created.

Thanks so much to everyone liked/followed/commented on this story! It really is lovely to know that people are responding to my writing and my story. Hopefully I'll have some more stories to share with you in the future :)


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